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Stew with Almond Sauce

A stew of meat or fowl cooked with tomatoes, almonds, raisins, bread, and spices, finished with almond sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Stew with Almond Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Fry the onion and spices in lard until browned, then remove.

  2. Fry the almonds, raisins, and bread, then mash to a smooth paste.

  3. Boil the tomatoes separately and pass through a sieve.

  4. Add the paste and raisins to the frying pan and cook for a few moments.

Finish the stew

  1. Combine the prepared ingredients in the saucepan with the meat that has been cooking for about two hours.

  2. After another half hour, the meat will be ready.

  3. Add capers and olives if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Ground and mashed into a paste, they thicken the sauce and give it a rich, nutty body.
Bread
Mashed into the paste, it helps thicken the sauce and gives it a smooth, even texture.
Tomatoes
Boiled and sieved, they add acidity and liquid that balances the rich almond sauce.
Raisins
Cooked into the paste, they add sweetness that contrasts with the savoury stew.
Lard
Fat used to fry the onion and spices, carrying their aroma and helping them brown.
Onion
Fried in lard until browned, it builds a deep savoury base for the sauce.

The step that matters

Mashing the almond, raisin and bread paste smooth. Frying the almonds, raisins and bread until golden and then mashing them fully breaks down the solids. A smooth paste thickens the sauce evenly; lumps left behind will make the sauce gritty.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, almond, tomato, bread, clove, cinnamon, raisin):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, almond, tomato, bread, clove, cinnamon, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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